Petro culture

40 years after the first oil discovery on the Norwegian shelf comes the first major cultural blowout. In Norwegian cultural history, the "petro" may prove to be more important than the protests in Paris that year.

Perhaps it began with Øyvind Rimbereid's poem Solaris, corrected from 2004, an underwater fable in an underlying language that delivers petroleum production to fiction.

Now the prose, contemporary art and documentary are followed.

Centenary perspective

Eivind Tolås has directed Oil, which will be shown on NRK. The documentary series consists of five episodes, which deal with the treasure hunt of the 1960 century, how communities like Stavanger have been transformed by the discoveries, the Alexander Kielland accident, the iconic concrete platforms, and the politicians' struggles to deal with all this.

When Ny Tid asks why "petro history" is important, Tolås answers that the question is surprising.
– Oil is the most important industry in Norway, and what we live on. Of course it is significant, he says.

- Why do you think then that it has taken so long before we get such a wave of petroculture products?

- It was impossible to know how big this would be, something that is easy to forget when you problematize the oil nation today. It also takes time before such a dramatic social change sinks in and can be the subject of reflection, says the director.
Also the books From the Deep. The history of the North Sea divers and Norway's eternal wealth. The oil, gas and petro-crowns are fresh historical writing from the Norwegian continental shelf.

Statoil's first CEO Arve Johnsen is behind the latter.
– After the Ekofisk discovery in 1969, we realized that this had a hundred-year perspective, he says.
Johnsen himself was a key player in the first years of oil production in Norway, and in the book he tells the petro story from the inside. When he joined Statoil, the offices consisted of an apartment in Stavanger. The fact that the company has contributed to a huge growth in prosperity in Norway later in life is due to a small handful of people, with Jens Evensen, Trygve Lie, Johan B. Holte and Jens Christian Hauge at the forefront. They understood,

According to Johnsen, some crucial decisions are already in the 60s.
– Let me put it this way, we were lucky. But it was not accidental. A number of key people saw the technological and administrative challenges that lay there and drove the development in a collaboration between private and state enterprises, he says.
The Statoil veteran believes the great success has been a major reason why there has so far been little discussion of Norway's oil adventure. He himself will settle accounts after 50 years of petroleum activity.

- Besides, I felt challenged when Eivind Reiten and Helge Lund merged Statoil and Hydro. I believe that it would have been useful for the next 50 years with a healthy competition, he says.

The growth of the oil fund also has an impact on the cane vacuum associated with the petroleum sector, believes the former Statoil boss.
– This transformation from reserves at the bottom to reserves in the bank has made people aware of the wealth. Norway is becoming a newly rich country, and it has an enormous effect on political life, says Johnsen.

The story from below

Together with Le Mondes man in the Nordic region, Olivier Truc, Christian Catomeris in SVT has written From the Deep. Here, the Swedish / French author couple tells another version of the petro adventure.

The cover is adorned by a diver who plants the Norwegian flag on the seabed. The image reflects on Buzz Aldrin's flag hoisting on the moon, as it was perpetuated in 1969. Statoil then used the two images side by side in a profiling campaign. The government's plans for CO2 purification are thus not the first allusion between the petro and the moon landing. The pioneer divers in the North Sea, like Buzz and Neal Armstrong, pushed the body and technology to the extreme.

- Did welfare require a human sacrifice?
– Yes, I would say that. At least for it to be realized so quickly, says Catomeris.

He and his colleague Truc have wanted to see the Norwegian oil adventure as part of a global history. But they also want to convey the little diver's fight against the power.

- What does Norwegian oil history look like from the bottom up?
– Norway's development from poverty to a powerful oil nation is fascinating. But the story also appears as a saga. And when progress is thus made into an adventure, the shadowy sides disappear. We have wanted to highlight what breaks with a one-sided narrative about the nation's emergence, says Catomeris.

He also believes it is a male world described in the book, not only with the divers but also with the companies and the state.
– It is a matter of a macho culture that pushes forward at all costs. It is often speed-blind, it is about conquering new territories, and it is drawn in the direction of a cowboy ideal, says Catomeris.

Following a review report a few years ago, the government decided to offer collective recognition and individual compensation for work in the North Sea. For the authors of From the Deep, this marks the end of an era, as the divers thus received a kind of uprising.

At the same time, the amount of compensation has led to two rounds in court. In the first state lost, but the case was appealed. This week the verdict fell to the other: The state has no liability. This time it is the divers who appeal, and the case goes directly to the Supreme Court.

- A black spot in the self-image

Visual artist Marianne Heier has in the work Pionér let one of the divers speak. He says: «Down to a maximum of 25 meters: beautiful colors, beautiful reefs, shell growth, seaweed growth, fish life… 100 meters: a gray light tone, and the seabed does not have much growth. So there are no reflections in the sea. I have been at 300 meters: Total darkness. In total.

I have only worked in two – three situations where total darkness has been an advantage. I'm glad I did not see what happened. "
Heier has also invested a state art scholarship in the offshore industry – or "reinvested", as she says, since the money also came from there. As she sees it, the shelf as Norwegian contemporary art stands on the Norwegian continental shelf in the North Sea.
– I also think it is interesting to see how this is embodied in the aesthetic rhetoric around the nation of Norway. Take, for example, the idea of ​​the relationship between Norwegian art and Norwegian nature. It is not mountains and fjords that drive art in Norway today. That's the oil money. The landscape that gives life to Norwegian art is the bottom of the North Sea, rather than the Norwegian mountains, says Heier.

The work Saga Night is a paved road stub at Maihaugen in Lillehammer, where Norwegian history is represented in the form of housing from different eras. This small road surface begins abruptly, interrupting the bright gravel road that has taken visitors through the 16th, 17th and 1800th centuries, and past the 1950s and 60s. Heier has wanted to comment on the site's seamless presentation of the Norwegian story of austerity and toil, as if nothing fundamentally new occurred with the first oil discovery.

- The fact that oil history has been left out, here and elsewhere, shows that there is a blind spot in our self-image and understanding of history. One gets the impression that the Norwegian wealth is based on hard work through generations, she says.

In connection with the presentation of the work of art earlier this year, Heier said: "The history of modern Norway is not primarily about patience, traditions, austerity and toil, but about success."

- What looks like heirloom silver is in fact lost property, she continues now, before she points out that the Norwegian pietistic tradition makes the wearer a figure we are reluctant to let go of.

- We like him better than Espen Askeladd. Because if we have struggled for prosperity, it belongs to us and we do not have to share it with anyone. If it was all a stroke of luck, such an attitude would be much more problematic.

The Espen Askeladd metaphor does not quite appeal to former Statoil chief and author of Norway's eternal wealth, Arve Johnsen.
– I have never said that we have earned this fortune. It could not occur to me. But when I do not compare with Askeladden, it is about the fact that our approach has been far too systematic, he says.

- Ok. But does not the "stroke of luck" still mean that we have a great responsibility?

- There is no doubt about that. I have never been a supporter of development assistance, but as I write in the book, I hope that we spend some of our wealth on "education, modern transport, new business and sensible environmental investments in both Norway and developing countries", he says.

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